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Home Products You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)
You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)
You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)
You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)
You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)
You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)
You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)
You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)

You Killed Me First - From Despair to Where (Richey Manic)

£1,000.00

Framing

  • Made exclusively for The Art Hound Gallery's Exhibition Come As You Are July 2026
  • Mixed media collage on wood panel, matte and gloss finish
  • Unique work 1
  •  16 x 20 inches
  • Signed and Titled Verso
  • Collage work is mounted on wood with hand painted gloss and matte finishing- this work does not require framing for display, but can be framed to enhance the piece.
  • This work is free to be shipped unframed within the UK and standard shipping price for the rest of the world. 

    About The Work:

    In 1992, while living in Los Angeles, I saw a photograph of the Manic Street Preachers for the first time.
    I had long hair, played in a buttrock band, and thought I had a clear sense of who I was. Then I saw Richey Edwards and the band's sharp, deliberate image.
    Overnight, I felt completely out of date. It was one of those moments when a photograph becomes more than a photograph—it becomes a mirror, reflecting back a version of yourself you hadn't yet recognized.

    This piece explores the idea that we are never just one person. The torn layers reveal two faces occupying the same space: the self we present to the world and the self we carry within.
    Sometimes those versions align and we feel whole. Other times they fracture, pulling in different directions, leaving us struggling to reconcile who we are with who we want to be.

    Richey Edwards embodied many of those contradictions—confidence and vulnerability, beauty and despair, certainty and doubt.
    The title, From Despair to Where, borrowed from the Manic Street Preachers song, speaks to that journey between fragmentation and clarity, between losing yourself and finding your way back.

    Constructed from layered collage on wood panel and finished with contrasting matte and gloss surfaces, the work emphasizes these shifting identities.
    The tears, seams, and textures are not meant to hide the divide, but to make it visible.
    (Shawn Gaitlin AKA You Killed Me First, July 2026)

    YOU KILLED ME FIRST 

    You Killed Me First is the tag name of American street artist, Shawn Gatlin. His works appear in the streets of Las Vegas and Los Angeles where he is based, and are a celebration of Pop, Punk and Counterculture in all its forms. 

    You Killed Me First’s signature style of ripped images collaged together is a labour intensive process - finding and matching celebrity portraits with their younger selves or cool contemporaries, to appear as the same piece, then creating the work as both a digital and physical collage.

    These works appear both in the street as paste ups harking back to the iconic ripped posters of the French ‘decollage’ technique of the Nouveau Realisme Modern Art movement as well as a teenage bedroom wall. He also creates experimental original canvas collaged pieces hand made with resins, glitters and glosses for collectors. 

    Alongside his paste ups, You Killed Me First’s street art has included a ‘Lost Bottle Project’ which takes discarded beer and wine bottles from the streets of Las Vegas, cleans and re-labels them with bold statements, and then returns them to the streets to be found again. He is also the only known street artist to have sneaked a work into the hallowed domain of Disneyland - the Haunted Mansion lawn became home to one of his odes to the famous ride. 

    The Art Hound is proud to bring You Killed Me First to the UK exclusively to our gallery.

    Collections: come as you are, NEW RELEASES, You Killed Me First